The Dandelion Clock

by Guy Burt

  ‘Sure.’ I look around us; there’s no-one nearby. ‘Jamie, is this – is it safe? You’re not going to get into any trouble?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No. I’m being careful, promise. I’m keeping up the schoolwork – well, pretty much. It doesn’t matter. I can afford to slip a bit. But this is important. I won’t get caught, and neither will you.’

  ‘OK, then,’ I say, still not sure about anything.

  ‘Don’t worry so much,’ he says, cheerfully. ‘This is the best thing that’s happened to me in ages. I’m not going to risk fucking it up. I’m really careful.’

  ‘So – what is it?’ I say.

  He grins. ‘You’ll have to come along and find out,’ he says.

  ‘Jamie—’

  He shrugs. ‘Live a little,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to.’

  I laugh as we start walking again. ‘Of course I want to,’ I say. Briefly, some more words scatter through my mind – you know I’d do anything for you – but I keep them inside. We both know they’re true, so there’s no need to say them aloud.

  The ease with which Jamie slips out of the school grounds, down a lane behind one of the maintenance buildings, makes me realize that he has done this many times before – and again I’m struck by the things I’ve missed, by what I haven’t known. He’s wearing jeans and trainers and a shirt, open at the neck, and a dark jacket. He’s also carrying the rugged and battered case that contains his sax, and at last I have a clue as to what we’re doing.

  The train station is relatively deserted, but we’re careful here in case some returning master or senior boy should spot us. In case someone does, Jamie has a cover story all worked out; and it reminds me of our contingency plans many years before, the methodical way in which he outlines it to me as we walk. In this, at least, Jamie has lost none of his precision.

  The train into London takes the best part of an hour, but once there, we don’t have far to go. In the lights of the city, a change comes over Jamie that surprises – astonishes – me. Suddenly, the awkwardness and almost sullen withdrawal that have seemed to characterize him recently fall away, and he is confident, talkative, excited. His pace picks up as we walk, and he laughs and talks and is, for these minutes between the station and the club to which he has at last told me we’re heading, the same enthusiastic, vibrant Jamie that I have known before. For some reason, although I am thrilled to see him like this, it strikes a sharp note of sadness in me; and I realize after a minute or two why. It is the first time he has seemed really alive in a long while, and I see, all of a sudden, that this is where he really belongs, and that something about life at school is stifling him. Not the same claustrophobia that comes over anyone in an institution like a boarding school, but something far more personal and far more penetrating. It is like watching loneliness evaporate when someone is suddenly surrounded by friends; except that here, it is the buildings and the streets and the lights and the smells that wash away Jamie’s loneliness. And it hurts me to realize that he has been lonely even when I am there, and that only this – only what we are doing now, whatever that is – really quenches the thirst in him.

  ‘We’re here,’ he says. ‘Back door. You can come in this way too.’

  It’s a matte-painted fire-door in the blank brick wall of a little side alley. Jamie punches the buzzer at the side, and some minutes pass before a man pushes the door open for us. He recognizes Jamie, grins at him, glances at me.

  ‘He’s a friend,’ Jamie says.

  ‘Fair enough. Your set’s on in twenty. You want a drink?’

  ‘Just one,’ Jamie says. ‘Alex?’

  ‘A – a Coke, I think,’ I say, not knowing whether or not to say a beer. The man just nods, though.

  ‘Right you are. Rest of the crowd’s out front, I think, except Paul.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  We have made our way down a narrow, black-painted corridor to a set of swing doors which lead through into an untidy room. The walls here are painted garishly in bright primaries, and the floor is littered with old polystyrene cups and cigarette ends. Instrument cases and larger flight cases and some amplifiers are stacked round the walls. Sitting on one of these is a young man, maybe in his early twenties, fitting a new string to an instrument I think at first is an electric guitar, but which after another look I realize is a bass. Being around Jamie has taught me the difference. The young man looks up.

  ‘James,’ he says. ‘Good to see you. Who’s your friend?’

  ‘This is Alex,’ Jamie says. ‘Alex – Paul, our bassist.’

  ‘Hi,’ I say. Our bassist echoes in my mind.

  ‘Hello. How long have we got now?’

  ‘Sammy says twenty. I’m going to get this thing warmed up.’

  As he talks, Jamie sets the saxophone case on one of the big flight cases and, opening it, starts to slot the pieces of the sax together. He glances over at me.

  ‘This is our dressing-room,’ he says, grinning. ‘Impressive ambience, no?’

  ‘Are you two part of a band, then?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, kind of. Actually, Paul’s in another band. So are the others, mainly. We’re all kind of moonlighting.’

  I must look blank, because Paul says, ‘You know – we all play other music as well. More commercial stuff, usually. But James and I were talking, and saying how cool it would be to do some of the old numbers sometimes, and I knew some other people, and it kind of went from there. We’re just not giving up the day jobs, know what I mean?’

  I nod, understanding, though a hundred tiny parts of the story feel out of place to me. Whatever Paul’s idea of a day job is, Jamie’s day job should be being at school. Except he’s not Jamie here; he’s James. It sounds older, more grown-up. Looking at Jamie, blowing warm air through the mouthpiece of the sax to get the reed supple, I suddenly see how much older he looks, too; his hands on the instrument are confident, and he looks both calm and tingling with tension. It’s controlled excitement, of course. His hair has flopped over one eye as it sometimes does, and he looks – I struggle to find the right words, but I can’t fit them round the thought. He looks like he fits here; he looks at ease and – and right.

  The man they’ve called Sammy, who seems to own the club, comes back with a Coke in a plastic cup and a beer in a proper glass, and sets them by Jamie. ‘How’s it going?’ he says to Paul.

  ‘Sorted. What’s the crowd like?’

  Sammy grins. ‘Pretty full. Should go down well. Save a few real slow ones for the end, OK?’

  Paul nods, and Jamie turns, smiling, and says, ‘Sure. They’ll leave weeping, I promise.’

  ‘Good. Take care now, you’ve got another ten or so. I’ve got to go out front for a while.’

  ‘Sure. See you.’

  I can’t get over the feeling that Jamie looks taller, somehow; as if he’s gained stature since passing through the stage door of this place. He has his jacket open, but he hasn’t taken it off. I watch as he adjusts the sling of the sax round his neck, and hooks the instrument in place; then he glances at Paul, one eyebrow raised. ‘Time for a quickie?’

  Paul laughs. ‘Yeah, all right. Key of D, twelve bar.’ He starts to pick out a progression of notes on the bass, and though the instrument isn’t live – isn’t amplified yet – the room is small enough and I’m close enough that they sound loud. After he’s made it through the progression and started on it a second time, Jamie joins in, very softly. I know how loud the sax can be; but here Jamie holds almost all the sound in, keeps the notes very low, so that they thrum gently in the air. All the time, from further along the corridor, has come the sound of music from what must be the bar itself: up-tempo stuff, loud and involved and exciting, and the sound of people clapping and cheering. But these sounds are slowly pushed back out of the doorway of the room by the gentler beat and pace of the piece Jamie and Paul are constructing in front of me. I lean back against the wall and watch in silence as they work through the different variations, as Ja
mie coaxes spirals of sound from the instrument, as they play with off-beat rhythms and counterpoints for little heady fractions of time, and then catch the beat again perfectly before the piece can come apart. And in the end, they close it all down, bringing all the arcs of notes together to one last two-note chord that hangs for a moment, and is gone. I clap, and Jamie smiles.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I say. ‘That was brilliant.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he says quietly.

  ‘It wasn’t bad, at that,’ Paul says. ‘We should work on it, maybe use it some time.’

  ‘The old ones are definitely the best,’ Jamie says. ‘Well, I guess we’re on. Quick slash before the set. I’ll see you out front. Paul – you’ll show Alex where to go, yeah?’

  ‘Sure,’ Paul says.

  Jamie grins at me. ‘Wish us luck,’ he says.

  ‘Good luck,’ I say.

  ‘Right.’ He backs out the door, protecting the reed of the sax with one hand, and vanishes up the corridor.

  Paul stands up and unslings his bass. ‘You two are friends?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s good with that horn,’ he says. ‘Young, too. I wasn’t that good at this thing when I was his age.’

  ‘He’s always been good with stuff like that,’ I say, thinking of the clarinet.

  ‘And you? Do you play?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I – I don’t.’

  ‘Well, at least you don’t have to stay sober, then,’ he says with a grin. ‘Come on. I’ll show you a good place to sit if you want to see what’s happening.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  As we go out into the narrow corridor, he says, ‘You and Jamie been friends long, then?’

  ‘All our lives, really,’ I say.

  ‘Oh!’ he says, sounding surprised. ‘Oh, right.’

  And then we are through to the main body of the club, and the sound of the band who are finishing their set closes in around us. Paul points through the crowd to a place at the end of the bar, and I nod to show I’ve got it. He gives me a quick thumbs-up, and then moves back against the wall, keeping his bass carefully out of the way of the press of people. I ease my way through the crush, wondering how, if I’ve known Jamie all my life, I can still be finding out so much about him.

  ‘You know you’ll really be in deep shit if anyone finds out,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jamie says.

  ‘You’re not worried?’

  He is staring out of the window of the train at the darkness, and the occasional freckles of light from the little towns and villages we’re passing. I can see a dark reflection of his face in the window glass. He smiles slightly. ‘Not really. I mean, what’s the worst they can do?’

  ‘They could expel you,’ I say, bluntly.

  He gives a small shrug. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You don’t want that, do you?’

  He closes his eyes. ‘It’s not a question of what I don’t want,’ he says. ‘It’s about what I do want. I have to do this. This is – important – in a way that the rest of it – well, it just doesn’t compare. They’re not the same. This is—’ I watch him struggle for words. ‘This is the real me,’ he says. ‘The rest of it they can keep.’

  This is the real me.

  I say, ‘How long have you – I mean, how long have you been doing this?’

  ‘A while,’ he says softly. ‘Regularly, now, for a couple of months. Before that, just once in a while.’

  ‘And they let you?’ I ask, meaning the people in the club. ‘You’re only sixteen.’

  ‘I look older, if I dress right. And besides, I’m good. And I don’t ask to be paid much. Sammy knows he’s onto a good thing.’

  I think about that; Jamie’s right. He does look older, in the club; older and different. And he is good. The band have been impressive – some of the numbers have been compelling. The applause and shouts from the crowd in the club are obviously genuine.

  Jamie slumps lower into his seat. ‘I’m knackered,’ he says. ‘It really takes it out of you. Normally I have to keep awake so I don’t miss the stop.’

  ‘I can keep an eye out,’ I say.

  ‘Thanks.’ He still has his eyes closed. One arm rests comfortably along the top of the sax case on the seat beside him. His hair has fallen loosely across his brow and left eye again, and the tiredness which I have noticed in his face at school, and which has disappeared for the short time we’ve been in London, is back again. It is as though there is something poisonous about school, that the further from it we go, the more alive Jamie looks. In my head, I compare this to the artificial posturing of other sixth-form boys; their self-conscious attitudes of anger and rebellion, their drug-culture posters and statement clothes. I think of Jamie’s neat, ordered room, and Jamie’s quietly spoken conservatism in most matters, and wonder what these other boys would think if they knew as much about him as I do. Straight after that thought, though, comes the recollection that I can’t be sure, any longer, how well it is that I do know Jamie. James. Whoever he is.

  ‘Just be careful,’ I say quietly, but it seems that he’s already asleep; his head has nodded down and I can’t see his eyes any longer for the swatch of hair that covers them. His arm is still on the sax case, as if he has it round the shoulder of a friend.

  I whisper, ‘Be careful, OK?’

  Outside, the stations pass by one by one, as the train slowly clatters its way back towards school.

  Through the next day, the memory of the bombing haunts my thoughts; it is as if my mind can’t help playing with the terrible possibilities contained in it. That Anna and I might be dead now. That somehow I might have survived and Anna die; or be horribly maimed, something awful. I can’t leave it alone. The way that something this huge can crash into our lives at random shakes me. I begin to realize that I have always trusted that, if you look both ways crossing the road, and if you keep back from the edge of the platform on the underground, and do all the right things, nothing really bad can happen. But this has happened, and has happened so close to us that it has almost grazed us with its force. We could have been in there, I keep thinking. If we hadn’t left when we did – if we’d waited longer, kissing at the news-stand, perhaps some fragment of masonry from the blast might have – it is all too horrible to contemplate, and yet I can’t stop myself. It churns over and over in my head until I feel almost dizzy from the repetitions. There are only so many times you can feel sick with the awful realization of what has only just passed you by.

  At last, my nerves seem to steady somewhat. Anna, throughout the morning, has been subdued, unusually quiet; and this is so unlike her that I know she is feeling some of the whirl of emotions that I am. It seems better not to talk to her about it – at least, not just yet. Perhaps both of us need to settle ourselves somewhat, get back to believing that the earth is solid under our feet.

  Late in the morning, a face in the crowd catches my eye and I turn. My heart is suddenly hammering. I stare at the woman – picking through the items spread on the blanket of one of the street-traders. I’ve never seen her before. Her husband comes over a moment later, looks with her for a while, and then they go off together. She is older, now that I see her clearly, than I have thought she would be. She has a red silk scarf tied into her hair, and it is this, I know at once, that has made me turn.

  There was a girl outside the bar with red streaks in her hair. That is what I have thought I’ve seen.

  Why is that important?

  And I remember the feeling I had before: that I have seen this woman somewhere. Suddenly, finding in my mind where that place might be feels very important. The same woman, twice; and then the bomb.

  Where had I seen her before?

  Even though I can’t just let myself fall away into the past and catch the answer in the swirls of images there, I know for sure that I have seen her before. If I can think where, perhaps there will be something – important – in that.

  The confusion in my head is worse th
an ever. I take a breath, hold it for a moment, try to calm myself. The chaos of thoughts and speculation gradually drains away. Nearby, Anna is wandering between the stalls of the street market we’ve found, looking at clothes – jackets. She’s managing to keep at least the outward semblance of calm. I fix my eyes on her: she’s still here. I’m still here. The things that could have happened, didn’t; we’re safe. I keep these thoughts in me until they force out the last remaining shreds of panic and chaos, and then I let the breath out, and walk through the stalls to catch up with her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘So he was a bad man, the man you shot?’

  Anna’s voice sounds small but sure in the echoing stillness of the chapel. Crouched round the hermit, we all wait; but the hermit is quiet for a long time, and at last I can see he doesn’t really know how to answer.

  ‘He was, wasn’t he?’ Anna says. She’s staring hard at the hermit.

  ‘Yes,’ the hermit says. ‘He was a bad man.’

  ‘And the other man was trying to shoot you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So that was self-defence, at least.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Well.’

  The other man is the one whose condition remains critical. He is the second man the hermit has shot; the first – the man who’s dead – is shot on the steps of the building he’s leaving. I can imagine the way he must look as the telescopic sights of the rifle line up on him, his head neatly framed by the three thin hairlines. The second man is a bodyguard or a policeman; the hermit isn’t sure which. He’s shot in an alleyway behind the apartment building the hermit is leaving. It is his bullet which has passed through the hermit’s leg.

  We all sit looking at the hermit for a while. He seems to be lost in his own thoughts. Then he looks up, and asks casually, ‘Where did you put the gun, by the way?’

  ‘In the—’ I say, before Jamie jabs his elbow into my arm. ‘Ow,’ I say, sulkily.

  ‘It’s safe,’ Anna says. ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve taken care of everything.’

  The hermit shrugs. ‘All right,’ he says.